Abdal Hakim Murad – The Correct Response
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AI: Transcript ©
Our own OMA is also in this terrible state of forgetting this
wisdom of mercy. Yes, zero wala to zero. make things easier he says
sallallahu alayhi wa salam don't make them harder.
Smilla Rahmanir Rahim Hamdulillah he Robinson aalameen or salat wa
salam O Allah Ashraf al Anbiya even more saline Sayidina Muhammad
in wa ala early he or Safi at Moraine
we can reflect on I think in this particular context is
one of the songs of the age not so much the photo or
the or sauna. So much of our Islamic conversation is about
firefighting little fact was about issues that suddenly arise pre
stunned halau meat or niqab requirements in Denmark or we run
from crisis to crisis, getting quite out of breath and anxious in
the process. But what we need to do in the manner of the great ones
of the past because alien approach if you like, or the approach of
Shaohua, Yolanda Halevi, those who think about what it's all for, is
to consider what should be the deepest strategy, not the tactics,
but the strategy. That means longer term understanding of our
relationship with money, Adam and history at this particular
difficult unheralded point in the evolution of money, Adam,
but also the extent to which
we engage or disengage.
And this is something that is, it seems prophetically foretold and
anticipated.
Muslims do love those YouTube clips about the end times and how
certain we'll put Anik versus
amazingly come true. In our modernity, space travel or the
shape of the Earth, or embryology or the dead gel, who of course is
used to be the television, the one I did yeah, now I guess it's the
computer nerd out there interpretation, interpretations
will continue to evolve. But there is certainly in our tradition,
a strong, not only eschatological warning, because this is the final
revelation and the Holy Prophet alayhi salatu salam is a lock
and unlock for learner be buddy.
I am the last
the one who realms things off there will be no profit after me.
And that one of his names is Nabil meltham.
Mohammed is sometimes translated as battles, raids, but it's
specifically to do with in time, eschatological flare ups Mullah
him. When we think of Mullah Mohammed, we think about the Torah
by Magna the dissolution at the end of the historical cycle. So
there is already in our self understanding as a community, this
idea that we're the ones who end it all.
So
not only do we have that, the Bible ends also within time
predictions, but we also have guidance on what to do if one
happens to find oneself through the Divine Decree, not through
choice in those times.
Now, Mo, Miss Bulu and her the Allamah in holiness says, one
asked of it the hour, when's it all going to happen, does not know
any more of it, than the questioner. He does not know
sallallahu alayhi wa sallam this is in the Hadith. We therefore
cannot know.
But it is, in any case, a fool's errand to try and say that we are
at this point in the divine calendar. We don't know. Our
founder didn't know. Therefore we can't know. But instead, we can at
least be aware that in times of turbulence, certain strategies are
canceled. This is what you won't find in the Al Kitab and their
literature, not only the terrors of the beast and the Antichrist
and the
book of Revelation and most bloodcurdling coda to the New
Testament, when Christ appears with feet of brass and eyes of
fire, casting his enemies into the eternal flame.
but also what to do in that time.
Bypass by extrapolation, anything that looks like the termination of
a civilizational cycle, when things seem to be bad is going to
learn from that advice.
Now, the most evident advice is the one which we are generally not
inclined to follow.
You should go on your corner hire American Muslim, Vanya, daddy or
be share others you barely won my walk a three year federal BDD
hemosol fitten. The Times almost come he says to Lola who alayhi wa
sallam, when the best thing a Muslim can own get hold off will
be some sheep with which he seeks out the remote valleys and the
places where rain falls, fleeing with his religion from fitna.
There's another Hadith like this and we know that one of the
council's for times of great turbidity in human affairs is to
head for the hills, maybe in a kind of weak, analogous pathetic
way are coming here rather than going into a huddle in a city is a
kind of realisation of the wisdom of that there was more clarity
when surrounded by the calm of nature than the uproar of urban
life.
But in any case, whether or not we take ourselves to be in terminal
times
the question of the believers appropriate strategy rather than
just firefighting fatwas is something that is necessary to
sort out. How should we be in a time that doesn't understand us
and which we hardly understand?
In Britain, no longer even surrounded by the LOL keytab. Is
there anything in our fifth literature that explains how you
deal with our situation? We've had contexts in our history where
we've lived as minorities in Imperial Russia or wherever. And
the very first, Moorhead your own, went to a hub Russia with a
Christian king, and they could line up and recite Surah Maryam
and there was common ground.
We can intermarry. We can break bread with them, we can eat the
meat that they slaughter. But what do we do now, when these people no
longer have a keytab? Most people and it happened in this decade in
England now no longer self identify as Jews or Christians.
There's something else they're coming here and doing some kind of
probably atheistic mindfulness, or they're chasing new age mirages.
Or they just read Christopher Hitchens and insist on the heroism
of belief and final mortality and the void of unmeaning. But they're
not any longer of GitHub. So how do we engage with them?
The issue regularly arises, more and more Muslims into marrying,
what do you do and the girl is really not very sure about
anything.
Very often, we have to put them through their paces and see if we
can still find some kind of wheel that allows us to categorize them
and odd circumstance, that it should be the Muslims who
determine whether somebody is actually Christian or not.
odd times. So we need in these times where we are surrounded by
people whose belief is ultimately in the void, that the miracle of
the world and human teleology doesn't really come from anywhere
transcendent, won't end anywhere transcendent. There is no
guarantee of moral redress in this world and morals themselves are
just human constructs. Part of The Selfish Gene strategy to ensure a
society in which the selfish gene can propagate itself a very dark
image to have replaced the Christianity, which it is
supplanted. What do we do when this is our environment and
context? Who are they exactly? What should be our
intersubjectivity our relationship with them? Is it benign? Is it
hostile? Do we embrace them? Do we step back? Do we buy our sheep and
head for the hills?
These are questions which we need to be considering. And as I've
said, our focus and our heritage doesn't actually give us too much
guidance on what to do when you with people who don't believe in
another belief, but don't have a belief at all.
Now, globally, this is unusual. Our situation in Western Europe is
not the situation of Muslims in America, where the Crystal
Cathedral is still full of 15,000 hand clappers.
Every Sunday morning, here, there's no Crystal Cathedral, just
a few parish churches with six or seven old ladies fumbling with
hymn books once a week. Europe is the exception.
But here we are. And maybe Europe is the future. Although the global
percentage of atheist is still less than 2%. Maybe it will
increase. But who knows? The history of religion is like the
nature of the human soul, unpredictable, unforeseeable,
unguessable, who knows there's something of the mystery of the
roof about it, because it's to do with inner tides, nothing that
mere sociologists could have a view on.
Now, it seems to me that the place to start is with the Halacha
oedema, Allah Surah T.
What are we looking at, when we are surrounded on the underground
by people who look like anybody else, but in whose hearts there
was just this void, who tried to live decent lives, according to
their lights. But his moral code seemed to be slipping in such
extraordinary directions,
that everything becomes just a matter of the sovereign
individuals choice. No matter the neuroscientists are now saying
that the self probably is just an illusion and fantasy of free will,
which was the basis of the Enlightenment idea of how to
replace religion is probably an imagination. That doesn't matter.
Instead, they're convinced that the self is the basis for
everything you make your own meaning, what you prefer, is
sovereign, unless occasionally awkwardly, it gets in the way of
what somebody else prefers, in which case, there needs to be some
kind of legislation, protected categories, or whatever. And that
always turns out to be difficult, not least, because the values are
in a state of constant evolution.
So the believer living in the society that no longer has its
anchorage in Kitab, of any kind, but he's just following an Apple
app. Ultimately, human preferences and desires, which pull us in all
kinds of directions, but given their nature, tend to be suspect,
a susceptible to the forces of gravity, generally human beings,
when told to follow what they prefer, will move in a downwards,
rather than upwards direction, because this is the nature of the
neffs.
But some are struggling and some are trying to find value, even in
this valueless world of so many souls, expressing themselves and
even in the kind of 19th century romantic way, sometimes thinking
that if only, they follow themselves and a true to
themselves to the nth degree, some kind of transcendence will be
disclosed.
doesn't usually work out that way. Follow yourself, and you'll find
what all of the traditions have always recognized, which is that
the nafs is a kind of trap and an illusion,
you'll find that it kind of comes to pieces in your hands, and you
just get dragged towards our work. And often a lot of inner traumas
will result.
If society is now telling you, nevermind the church, be true to
yourself, discover yourself, be yourself. Even though it
scientists are convinced that the self is probably just a cultural
invention. If you're in that antinomy, that paradox, and you
follow what you think you truly are,
you will end up very often in a state of trauma, and distress.
I feel that I'm truly British.
So I try to reach for that and discover what it is. And I get
into it, and I end up who knows, well, it's just a label. It's not
not a reality.
But then I find this other people who express it differently.
Or I feel I have a particular desire.
Now they're talking about Tetra sexual rights. I feel that I'm
Tetra asexual, and nobody can go against this. And I wish to form a
heterosexual circle with other consenting adults and I want
government to call this marriage. How can anybody be so Tetra phobic
as to go against this? Shocking so it's a my right? I know and I've
known since the age of four, so it must be right that I'm Tetra
phobic. At that I'm Tetris axial. So
this goes on and the result is often
The former, sometimes the overcome of prejudice, sometimes the kind
of liberation, but we don't know where it is or going to lead.
Now the response from the believer looking at this galaxy of our
work, instead of boring moralistic opposition and told you so ought
to be compassion.
Maybe that's the point at which we stopped.
If people find that the raw is veiled, and they're told that the
nafs is what you really are, and if you follow that, as much as you
can, you will achieve some kind of autonomy, and you will grow into
your full selfhood, enlightenment style,
then those who are from every religious tradition will have to
show compassion. Because if they're trapped in the Hall of
Mirrors, that is the self,
which is the self trying to understand itself. It's already a
paradox. You need the shake the teacher, the mirror, something
outside yourself, and then you see the falsity of what you take to be
yourself. But if they no longer have that language, and can't
conceive of it, and it's just the self, just the me, the me
generation, the response has to be compassion. And this is where a
lot of our preachers go wrong.
It's meaningless to fulminate against them when this is all that
they know.
If they are told that your happiness consists in being true
to yourself, and the self is defined as your preferences,
whatever you feel you truly are, however, transparently,
historically and socially constructed that might be
then the correct believing response is mercy. Compassion, not
anger, and self righteousness,
cursing and spitting from the pulpit. But really, these people
are the innocent victims of a system that is out of control.
Why blame them? If they've never had access to anything else?
Meaningless, immoral, on Islamic unfruitful. So the first principle
has to be this idea that every human being created in God's image
halacha mahalo Surah T, with all of the
conditionality that that form of language necessarily refers to in
our in our transcendentalist tradition 10 z cannot be
compromised by Tesh B.
But still,
the angels bowed down to the ancestor of this campaigner for
texts heterosexual marriage, angels bow down to that person's
ancestor, whatever he thinks his ancestor might have been
something slithering in the primordial ooze whatever, we have
a higher opinion of him and his self, then he has
Kurama bye Benny Adam.
We have ennobled the descendants of Adam, even if he she or they
heterosexual is referred to by the pronoun they usually, even if they
is
owned knows what. Still that Imago Dei cannot be completely lost and
that Allama Erdem as a color has this beautiful humanistic
beginning to our Scripture is still there, even if they can't
see it. We can't see it, but we know that it's there. And we know
that that person was present at the day of LS to be Rob become
in the presence of God, naturally a believer, you lead to Al fitrah.
So we respect people for what they were for what they are called to
be for the purpose of their creation. And then we look at them
with sorrow and compassion, as we look at ourselves who also mess up
and on that basis, then we can begin this process of conviviality
with this new form of money Adam.
This is going to take us a lot further. Because mercy tends to
melt hearts and furious hot tubers tend not to
adopt Raju Liang for cobalamin.
If you make somebody angry, you will never accept what you say.
This is Solomon Vinton Han, who is one of the early Muslims. In other
words, if you're evoking the anger and the wrath within
Your own ego and saying, haram, you're just a disgusting,
heterosexual and you want to marry, this is just a circular
whatever. If you get into that space, they're not going to
listen, they're not going to accept but unfortunately, we are
normally in that space.
So
getting out of our own egotistic trap, escaping from that into the
space of compassion and human solidarity is much more
interesting and much more likely to
to make headway.
So that it seems, is the first step.
The next step is to recognize that in our time,
of religious uproar, as well as secular uproar, we can spend much
of our lives hyperventilating about FTF of various kinds.
Those Barelvi scholars who spend their whole lives refuting the
deobandis scholars and vice versa. This is not the best use of our
time, and our minds and our intentions and our resources. How
often does it work not very often.
This is an age in which people are weak,
and an age in which arguments are more charged with ego and to
Hussam party spirit than ever before. And an age in which people
are less likely to listen to proper Sharia arguments because
everything has become a matter of solidarity and ancestry. Like the
J Helia hamir Tunja Helia, this feverish determination to follow
what one recognizes and one is the difficulty of being really open
minded to somebody else's perception. This is a gerbil
quality, the euro in your ear, which is one of the qualities of
the time everybody is delighted by his own opinion.
So
instead of campaigning, crusading out there to make everybody agree
with us.
Instead, we need to read what, even Allamah of generations far
better than our own, have said about this.
So for instance, one of the great Allamah of the Ottoman Empire,
known as Khatib, Shelby writes this very interesting book which
exists in large measure in English, me Zanele Hawk, the
balance of truth, and is living in a time where there's all kinds of
religious dissension and a kind of puritanical movement called the
call disorderly is cutting up nasty in Istanbul and beating up
Christians and smashing wine shops and that sort of thing.
Fighting bidder
and he says, If a bid is entrenched and opposing it is, he
says, I'll zoom her market for Jehovah, dear. It's really great
stupidity and ignorance. You're not going to uproot it.
It's there, you will simply exacerbate it. Even earlier on
Ibn Rushd al Jed,
in his mocha Dannette
says something similar. He says if you try to uproot a bit in our
time, you will end up making it stronger.
People will become defensive and they will turn this bid art into a
kind of badge of their identity. It becomes essential to who they
are and any kind of Sharia argument becomes reinterpreted or
inaudible because you're attacking them. This is just primitivism of
human nature. And he's saying that what about 800 years ago
Mohammed bin paralel Bhargavi the kind of time of Khatib Chela be a
little bit earlier 16th century as this book Atari Carl von Medea
Muhammadan path in which he is talking quite often about certain
popular practices and doctrinal errors and the FT laugh and the
things that believers love to get warmed up about
and he says
that it is forbidden to give people off marksman or fatwah the
stricter fatwah is forbidden to give so many different
interpretations of different things is halal is haram. This is
bit odd. This is some kind of acceptable bit. In many things in
Sharia. There is the rasa and the Azima the E
Try out. So I'm going to join my prayers even though there is the
strict application to stand a topic and also little felt pieces
in this age, you have to give people the easier interpretation.
Why? Because everybody is so weak.
Everybody is so weak, the believers are weak. Give them too
much and they'll collapse under the weight that I shared that Dino
I had an ill of Alaba that kind of idea. Never does religion become
heavy upon somebody except that it kind of defeats him.
And the wise preacher knows how much he or she can load an
individual believers backwards, but there's always more.
There's always more if you look at all of the optional prayers and
fasts and don't load people up so Albir giddy in a tyrannical
Muhammadiyah is saying it's forbidden to give people the
narrower, more precautionary fatwa because people are so weak now
that is the time in the 16th century, when Solomon the
magnificent is on the throne.
Okay, the Muslims are besieging Vienna, the ALMA, the flag of the
Khilafah, etc, etc, is flying from Hungary to Aden.
from Morocco, to Baghdad, one Alma, under one Sultan, and it's a
time of great Madame Chris barrel, Hadith commentaries, amazing an
era of flourishing a kind of golden age, but he's saying people
are so weak in this time that make things easy for them.
If that was the case, back then, what should be the view right now.
And yet in our time, everybody is getting off on finding narrow
interpretations. The rock star has become something suspicious for
weaklings, in authentic, not genuine or sincere and that Azima
has become kind of the same as proper practice. Even though the
Holy Prophet says Allah you select a Salam in Allah who will enter
Rohan so can a one to two as that Allah loves his concessions in the
law to be taken just as He loves, to the strict interpretations to
be taken.
But
because so much of our religious decision making nowadays is
governed by the self, the nafs. And by our desire to feel special,
and superior, and secure, we feel it's better to choose these really
narrow interpretations, which of course rules out all of the other
Muslims who are following some other interpretation. And as a
result, you get mayhem, disunity, disrespect a mess, and religion
becomes quite burdensome
those terrifying hoppers
where you come out of the mosque feeling, oh god.
I'd rather be in the dentist and in that mosque
really hurt.
The moldy sob has been telling you about how many 100 Millions of
years you go to if you miss your Doha prayer or something you go to
*
yeah, plenty of that and they think this is total heap scaring
people with tales of the Divine fury as if God is there to catch
us out is created the world just to see if he can catch us out
which is a curious reason for creating such an amazing cosmos
and Benny Adam, you catch us out? Gotcha.
Not really. R Rahman r Rahim, His names that he describes himself as
a nowadays the preacher who gives people the good news for best
sharing a bed.
People are a bit unsatisfied, and it's kind of soft.
We want the thunder and we feel now we're with the real
uncompromising believers. This is all nafs this is all egos has
nothing to do with us all. Nothing to do with Sunday has nothing to
do with wisdom. It's just our desire to feel that we're tough
and uncompromising. Why because we're insecure and anxious.
Yeah, emotion not a good basis for any religious decision,
particularly in something like also, but this is a very common
culture amongst Muslims in this decadent time. That what's
authentic is what is really narrow and uncompromising.
Why am I walking through the streets of Walsall in the rain?
Dress like I'm in the deserts of Arabia? Is because I'm not going
to follow any Ross's. I don't want to look like the kuffaar I'm going
to be authentic.
I'm special. Look at me, everyone. Well, he doesn't quite say that as
well. But
This is what he means.
And actually, he's doing it for himself. Because he's insecure and
he doesn't really want to get into anything that looks like a gray
area.
It's not a gray area of the roof. So it's not a gray area, but he
pleases himself by following this narrowness
and then others look at him and say, well, we can feel superior to
him by being narrower, still, Masha, Allah that Drogba is going
to be a little bit higher, and the turban can be a little bit bigger.
And we're going to wear sandals rather than his stupid sneakers.
And we're going to be even more authentic and far from any bidder.
And then somebody else does it. And there's a certain logarithmic
sort of succession of this, which afflicts a lot of Islamic work.
Nowadays, if you look at a lot of revolutionary Islamic movements,
you'll find that what's there now is much more extreme than what was
there 20 years earlier. And that was much more extreme than what
was there 20 years earlier, it just gets more and more wild and
ludicrous because people really love their sense of specialness.
Well, that's a sign of decadence. So what do we do in that context,
if we see in the outside world is full of people who believe in the
void, who think there's nothing intrinsic about good and evil,
really, but it's a kind of social utilitarian contract that is
endlessly negotiable. And they feel that they want to have a
heterosexual marriage, or whatever, Mother Son marriages,
whatever it is that the civil liberties people next into the
next stop on the line to destination X, they don't really
have a long term view of where we're going, but we have to
liberate ourselves.
So those it seems are some of our neighbors
but our own OMA is also in this terrible state of forgetting this
wisdom of mercy.
Yes, zero wala to zero. make things easier, he says sallallahu
alayhi wa salam don't make them harder.
There's plenty of Hadith like that. That's a sound Hadith.
Now who yeara Rasulullah sallallahu ala USL? lubaina
Amrhein Illa Ouattara eSATA Houma. mirlo Mia confy he isn't Holy
Prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam was never given the choice
between two things, but that he chose the easier as long as there
was no sin in it.
So but now
we want whatever seems to be really kind of tough and hard and
it's perverse, as though we're so full of our own sense of macho,
that we deliberately go to the dentist who's going to hurt us
most because we think ah, I'm really not making any concessions
in my dentistry, masha Allah, I'm a real tooth hero or something.
Dental Mujahid Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, I went to that
really bad dentist and it hurt so much, but I didn't make any
concessions. Allahu Akbar. Yeah, that's how we do our soul
devotees. And this is of course the ordinary Benny Adam who just
struggling to pray five times a day is
terrible. So they come out of the most kind of feeling really bad.
Yes, God has created the world as a kind of lethal minefield.
But one foot wrong and off the hill for 100 billion years Bovis
upset, so
careful, and life becomes very anxiety inducing. As a result.
This is not how the Holy Prophet was alayhi salam Salam, he made
things easier for people took them out of a pagan worldview, which
genuinely was full of crazy honor codes and vendettas and narrow
mindedness, and stupid cults and made things just a lot easier. And
it was a liberation. That's why people joined him in vast numbers.
It's not really what we're offering to the outside world.
Nowadays, unfortunately, we offer them something really difficult,
really hard.
We don't give them any kind of transition, or gentle way in the
way we used to.
It's all or nothing be perfect, or else. God only accepts
Superman in paradise you have to be some kind of amazing
super avid tip tiptoeing through the minefield until your final day
and then you've kind of made it but
intelligent people, even believers in the void are not particularly
magnetized by that strange understanding and they can see as
well as anybody does the emotionality and the anxiety, and
the panic attacks and the ALMA that have generated this so we
need to move away from that, but where do we turn?
That's the last thing I wanted to address. If we
really recognize that the modern idea of the self taking us to self
realization and therefore happiness isn't working too well,
and is producing an incredibly greedy economic climate that is
destroying the planet. So much human greed because we know we
need and deserve those products that the planet can't take it and
the planet, it's pretty big, but it's it's struggling under the
weight of human greed and competition and avidity for more
stuff that's not particularly sustainable or attractive to us.
Just to khairthal el hecho, Moto khairthal.
So we look to our own tradition. And we find the Mowlana of this
mosque cursing the molana of the next mosque and every generation
of radicals seems to be more wildly extreme and outlandish.
That's a disturbing environment as well and quite damaging to the
heart of religion is to be the garden in the midst of the fire of
human ego, but it looks pretty burnt up itself nowadays. Where do
we go? Our emotional cannon to shave? Why is it that we had in
our history, these modules, these fellowships within the larger
Ummah, called tariqa. Just say that within a certain social
environment, something of the spirit of brotherhood and openness
and mutual trust that united the Sahaba could be preserved outside
on the street, who knows how the Muslims five centuries on were
behaving, but in the Tariqa, you have something of the
reconnection, something of the real atmosphere of fraternity and
equality of the mohideen and the Ansara. And that was a precious
thing that was conserved, like a, like a time capsule.
Looking for that now might be difficult,
or impossible. But nobody says that it's easy.
What do you do in a time where the shoe seemed to have wound on their
shroud and moved on to the Better World leaving us as kind of
orphans.
We still have the reseller. We still have the five pillars. Our
religion is intact, despite the wildness of our egos, the prayer
the fast these things have preserved intact. And that's an
extraordinary blessing and is one of the Hussites of this honor.
But if I really want not just to be somebody who follows his ego
whether it's in feta or in this atheistic, I want to be me
culture.
If I want if I don't like being me, and I know that the me is not
really what I'm supposed to be and I have some kind of glimpse of a
better way of that knee to be knifes Allah wema maybe, who's
going to help me with that?
Man levy Rod digimarcon been Kawhia Tihar who's going to help
me hold the reins of this crazy stallion of my ego. I know where
it wants to go. And it never stops in every instant. There's one
thing that it wants to do. That's not the best thing. It never
leaves me alone. How am I going to deal with that?
GP can't give me a tablet. Psychology doesn't really
understand that there can be more than just the me the turbulences
of the self. Where do I go?
Where is a motional camel?
In this time, what the Olia and what the all on that tend to do is
first of all, to remind us of Allah's mercy, this is not God has
not created the universe as a minefield. But as a garden, and
wherever you look, if you look, right, for 10, my watch will lock
there is God's face. There is no place where he is distant.
We're distant. He's not
so panda. Matt, aka Rebecca Mini, about any
given author Ella Liscannor, recesses Subhanak your loss is an
amazing thing.
how close you are to me, well, not about any UNK, but how far I am
from you.
This is the basic thing of the human predicament, this entity to
which all of those angels bow down. All of them is kind of
fiddling with his phone and doing
inferior stuff, not living in the Supra angelic context for which we
have created
kind of messing around.
Well, how do we get out of that? How does the self get out of
itself? It's the old paradox, because the Divine is there. The
world is a mirror.
Everything is a divine sign.
One of the reasons why our Scripture particularly emphasize
izes the Indicative variety of the world and the nature the Divine
Name and Corrib
is because this Alma is going to be the armor of the Torah Magna.
The End times when the guides are gone and everything is really
hard. Really crazy stuff, heritage, rotting, chaos.
Everybody following completely crazy desires and everything super
abundant except what human beings really need. The religion is
designed for that.
And it has these techniques, one of which is cultivating the gaze.
Nature, the believer isn't too interested in glass skyscrapers,
but responds to the heart melting symmetry and calmness of the
natural world, which has not been erased despite the best efforts of
the self oriented biocidal global culture, it's still out there,
they're still trees and things birds, birds still seeing the sky
still beautiful. Moon still rises and sets. And in this letter yet
in the old L L, Bab signs for people of loop understanding that
loop is Sufi term as well. So this defect code continues to be a
valid method for us.
But it has to be a still regard for things. Not just
looking at the tree for about a high speed train, but somehow
really engaging with it.
Really engaging with it.
Being in the moment, which means being in reality,
being ignore works. Being aware of the unique, irreplaceable,
miraculous now notice of things
being harder, present and if you're harder than he is our
Kareem. Because wherever you turn, there is his face.
That's a Quranic verse. Can you imagine if say, Al Khaled had said
that half the ALMA nowadays will say cover haram ship yelling, but
it's in the Quran. So they can't do that. But we've been given all
of these hochkar in our in our Scripture.
And that is one method, reconnecting. And this is the
practice of sciatica, wandering in nature, which was what healed Imam
Al Ghazali soul during his crisis, engage with it and remember that
you're part of it. And remember that the practices of the Sunnah
are to be cherished and reverently maintained, because they re
emphasize and reestablish your membership of the natural world. I
guess the Sunnah that I bad is determined by the rising the
setting of the sun, the moon, your re
entering the world, the natural world, the world of cyclical time,
not the world of linear time, which is what humanity now
inhabits, which is unreal, 24 hours a day, tick, tick, tick,
that's not really part of the nature of the world. But when your
life is shaped, not so much by that, but by the prayer, and by
the sacred months, and all of those things. And by the hand,
you're out of that linear time into cyclical time. And you're
reconnected to something really ancient and primordial. There's a
profound healing in that. And if you really condition yourself with
these ancient sacred practices that no human hand has ever
contaminated, because that really wouldn't be better.
Then there is
a softening of the heart and the possibility of it opening.
Also seeing this in the human other, particularly, and this is
the tradition of what we call the showerhead. The human being who is
the witness to the divine.
Looking around yourself on the central line, it might seem a
little bit improbable.
But it's still true.
Every human being different, a particular configuration,
coagulation of the Divine properties in that person, and
that's just his or her DNA, which is not the most interesting bit
that's the clay bit. But the immortal soul, the miracle of the
spirit, the most interesting thing on earth and the thing that the
shoe really never tire of enjoying and contemplating. That's
interesting. That should jolt us out of our jadedness this
extraordinary fact of consciousness in the world and
seeing contemplating the quality of that person.
And this has nothing to do with a modern transactional idea of
ethics and human rights. This is some
Think much deeper. People are intrinsically valuable. Khurana
Benny Adam, and each one has something slightly different to
tell you about the divine purposes. Like ourselves, they may
not have realized those purposes and divine qualities, and that
person may be rather hard to see.
But you should always try to see what God means by that person and
the uniqueness of the divine self disclosure in that person. And in
some talk, they have the charming idea that the human face is
actually composed of the letters of the Arabic alphabet, called
Watier. In Turkey, like this, so the alif is the nose and the aim
for the eye. And they have a whole thing about that, because
in the human face, the Cheree, the countenance there is inscribed,
the secret qualities which ultimately the Divine Names, when
you can read that, really try to see what God means by another
human being, then you're taken back to that ultimate Adam ismat
icon that God taught Adam, all of the names, and then you can really
find something endlessly fascinating and amazing in other
human beings.
But because we no longer think human beings are legible, we have
this modern alternative, human rights and this individuality and
this, this right to do this and all of this stuff,
becomes more and more anxious and anxious and anxious until you get
to Tetra sexual marriage rites or whatever it might be.
It goes on and on.
until it reaches destination X, nobody really knows where it could
lead to because human desire for self expression and autonomy is
limitless.
That instead of that, you have something that isn't in a state of
constant flux and movement and uproar but is in a state of
stillness and awareness of the moment.
The gender thing has a lot to do with this. Why is it that the
gender relationality boy meets girl, husband and wife is under
such strain? Nowadays, because we no longer contemplate the divine
purposes in the other. We no longer have a sense of reverence
for the mystery of gender.
It's just The Selfish Gene doing its thing and doesn't
intrinsically mean anything because nothing intrinsically
means anything but the purpose 70 of human beings are their
teleology that where they're going what they are for what they
indicate, for short, something truly amazing.
And you can only really determine rights if we have to use that
word. And generally, ethical traditions we prefer duties to
rights duties are what makes us noble and useful. Rights are what
make other people useful to us. It's better to be useful than for
others to be useful to you. But rights is the language of the age,
and all of this stuff about how society should be organized and
how men should be and how women should be, which is one of the big
turbulences of the age and causes immense confusion
should be resolved not by forensically measuring who should
do what,
or hyperventilating about essentialism and stereotypes but
instead the believers gaze on the miracle of gender dimorphism. And
seeing the magnificence of womanhood, beauty, new life,
nurturing, these are divine qualities, most interesting things
in the world, what's more interesting than beauty and life
and,
therefore, respect her.
And also masculinity,
the protection, the fighting quality, the traditional role of
the male, not seen as a basis for kind of Tarzan like chest
thumping.
It's not ego is not about machismo, but merely about the
recognition of a divine purpose. When you see that when the spouse
sees that, not what that person is, but what that person is called
to be in the principle that is there, then you have a real sense
of complementarity and the possibility of spiritual growth
and flourishing so that the physical issue the children become
just a kind of symbol of something of a deeper fertility.
That we no longer think in those terms because of our
superficiality, and the invention of photography really hasn't
helped
Everything stops on the surface nowadays. And looking at the
essences has become difficult because we don't have much time.
But in that contemplation there is also an awareness of the divine
wisdom
for all Al Bab.
In other cases, other examples could be cited of how in an
ordinary non tariqa, profane, even office environment, one can engage
in this difficult which leads us on to dhikr which is innocence all
that you need the sheath is not an anything other than a means to an
end. The model sheet is there to help you remember God and of
story, God can disclose himself to you in any way he pleases. He
continues to be buried, he never calls himself about aid will
either say look I bear the uneven India quarry. If My servants ask
you about me then I am near or Eve Ramadan related verses and it is
Corrib in Ramadan because the ego is kind of a bit bashed and lots
of exuberance and difficulty as it often is and the spirit can start
to feed itself and start to fly if we actively use the opportunity
rather than than just look at our watches and look forward to if
time we use that opportunity, time for spiritual growth and
liberation.
But Allah is scary.
And we should final thought not allow the difficulty of finding a
traditional matrix and institutional environment for our
spiritual growth apart from occasional retreats
as an excuse for apathy and not making an effort
Dene, ASCII tre Kim Adair Elshad. Tarik, send him on yo Luna gear
Allah the Leo tofield famous Turkish line of poetry. Do not say
in the way of love who's going to guide me to the path you yourself
had set out on that path and Allah is the one he will tell Phil is
the one who guarantees success. Take one step towards him. The
hadith says he will take 10 steps towards you count towards him
walking, he comes to Hawala running, and this is a reality
because he wishes to be found. He longs to be known to us Oh, curry
appears the reality of things and infinitesimal distance behind
their surface. He is Markham, a Noma quantum with you, wherever
you may be, may not be with him because you're busy with your
stuff. But he is present always patiently awaiting you to open
your eyes. But he is patient.
So that's my final thought, a strategy for dealing with these
weird times. mercy, forgiveness, understanding, overcoming the ego,
being forgiving of people's weird interpretations, making religion
easier, not making it harder for people because everybody is
struggling. And then finally to remember that he has not gone
away. Even if human humanity has gone away from him. monotheism
most powerful principle in history continues to attract so many new
Muslims and Enquirer's and everybody craves to the fitrah
this light of toe hate hate and the return to the one. Everybody
wants. Tober everybody wants healing. They want to be sorted
out in God's hospital. Dara she fire Hooda as Rumi calls it God's
hospital. That's what we're for. Baby craves milk, we crave the
Corolla. This should not be difficult, but because of the nafs
and the age of the nafs the me generation, it's been made hard
for us but Allah continues to be a caribou. And he will open the
doors of His mercy and His acceptance and his unveiling to
those who sincerely and broken heartedly approach in and this is
his guarantee. Why should he turn anybody from his generous gates,
if they humbly approach him and this should be our intention in
every prayer?
As we fast as we engage with each other, as we engage with the world
of the egotistic void, as we pray for healing for humanity and for
the Ummah
don't despair, have to work all because a lot is carried and will
always be carried, and we are from him. And to him we return in Lila
are in LA he Raji I want to May Allah subhanaw taala open our
hearts and soften our hearts and overcome our egos and help us to
be merciful and rough him on to humanity and
and give us blessings in Shaban and bring us safely to Ramadan
along the baraka. Nafi. Shaban Baba Libnah Ramadan Allama taka
Ballymena indicator semi Allah Nima tube Alena indicated to Abba
Rahim, Baraka lofi come will offer me income was salam aleikum wa
rahmatullah.
Cambridge Muslim College, training the next generation of Muslim
thinkers.